At 3:00 a.m. on June 2, a young mother fled her burning Kyiv apartment, one small hand in each of hers. Her children were five and three. Around them, hundreds of terrified residents were running too, pouring into the dark from apartment blocks that moments earlier had been homes. Three Russian Iskander-M rockets had struck the neighborhood, turning ordinary bedrooms, kitchens, and stairwells into fire, smoke, and rubble.
Then came what Ukrainians have learned to dread: the “double tap.”
According to Ihor Padiuk, head of the Shevchenkivskyi Police Department, the tactic is deliberate. The first missiles drive people out of their apartments and bring firefighters, medics, and police rushing to the scene. Then, when the streets are crowded with survivors and first responders, the Russians strike again.
This time, Padiuk said, they fired another Iskander-M missile, loaded with shrapnel pellets. Its payload can scatter as many as 30,000 pea-sized metal fragments across the open ground. The timing is the point. It is designed to catch the maximum number of people outside, exposed and defenseless, and to kill not only civilians fleeing their homes, but the men and women trying to rescue them.
The mother was killed. Her five-year-old was seriously injured and, as Padiuk said, will be disabled for life. The three-year-old survived with a concussion.
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